Is your data center fully optimized? 8 questions to ask

Is Your Data Center Fully Optimized? 8 Questions to Ask The pressures of global competition are challenging IT organizations to deliver business services and transactions 24 x 7, online, with high availability and fast performance. These drivers are pushing IT to move up the stack from siloed technology-focused organizations to become service providers to the business. And IT needs to make demonstrable progress toward business and IT alignment by managing IT at the business service level. The focus on high-quality service delivery requires that processes and tools be optimized to deliver the highest level of service for the lowest cost. Hyper-V & Windows Server 2008: What You Should Know Server virtualization, server consolidation, and reducing data center complexity were three of the top four strategies cited for data center cost containment, according to a 2008 Ziff Davis Enterprise survey of 167 IT decision makers. (The fourth item was increasing automation of routine tasks.) Windows Server 2008 includes built-in virtualization technology to help organizations better manage IT resources. Specifically, Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V provides a hypervisor-based platform that allows applications to run on virtual machines (VMs), enabling the company to leverage centralized management, clustering, and enhanced security. Is That Sticky Note Encrypted? Effective Data Security for Laptops The worldwide shift from stationary desktop computers to highly-portable laptop and tablet PC computers offers organizations increased productivity, flexible work schedules and greater work/life balance. However, research indicates that lost or stolen laptop computers cause nearly 50% of public data breaches. Rather than imposing strangling IT asset policies aimed at forcing end users to comply, endpoint security strategies use centrally-managed technology to ensure that mobile devices such as laptops secure themselves. Accidentally or by design, employees will always be the weakest link in computer security strategies that rely on their diligence to provide consistent protection. 6 Steps to Order Perfection: Making Your Supply Chain More Efficient No enterprise is an island. Goods and services flow in from suppliers, involve transportation carriers and are driven by the business of the enterprise. When you include suppliers of wares for raw material extractors, along with recyclers that turn consumer and commercial waste into new raw materials and finished goods, it is a supply chain with no beginning and no end -- a renewable process dependant on successfully orchestrating business-to-business interactions. This white paper presents tangible ways to calculate supply chain efficiency, and offers 6 things your business can begin doing today to ensure that supply chain perfection is a realizable goal. End-to-End Risk Management: Quality Assurance and the IT Lifecycle When IT undertakes a development project, it signs -- figuratively or literally -- a contract with the business The contract spells out what requirements will be fulfilled and when they will be delivered. Yet IT departments often lack the ability to quantify and respond to the risks that arise during development and test. Requirements management -- as part of a comprehensive software quality management system -- helps IT quantify the risks associated with each requirement and make informed decisions about resource allocation and release. Developing an Information Strategy: 4 Considerations An Information Strategy is a holistic approach to information management that best supports the goals and strategies of the business. This is not a one-size-fits-all environment: companies will start in different places with different capabilities and different priorities. Goals may not be identical (for example, different industries have different regulations that may mandate somewhat different strategies). Defining an Information Strategy is hard because most organizations do not know what their current information status is. With so many different decisions to make, how do you do this in a concerted and consistent manner? How do you prioritize? Where do you start? eNewsletter Information: You are receiving this e-mail because you are a loyal subscriber to the Web Buyer's Guide White Paper Spotlight with the e-mail address ignoble.experiment@arconati.us. If you no longer wish to receive Web Buyer's Guide White Paper Spotlight, unsubscribe here. Copyright © 2009 Ziff Davis Enterprise. All Rights Reserved. Ziff Davis Enterprise, 28 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016 Privacy Policy